


External Sensations

by sylvermists



Category: Sense8 (TV)
Genre: (i'm a newbie at ao3 tags can you tell), (this fic is just me trying to deal with my emotions about sense8 ending), and like help them with stuff i suppose?, basically fluff where people from the sensate's lives "meet" the other sensates, but yeah you know enjoy, it's all good, major spoilers for season 1 and the christmas special though, not me i've only written 2.5 chapters so far, probably gonna be a lot of inconsistencies but ya know, probably gonna be some inconsistencies, set at some unclear point in time after the christmas special but before season 2, some canon relationships might make cameos but who knows
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-30
Updated: 2018-07-15
Packaged: 2019-02-24 04:24:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13205916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sylvermists/pseuds/sylvermists
Summary: Eight of them, eight souls bound together, closer than any of them had ever thought possible and yet still so achingly alone. Eight of them, against an enemy more powerful and all-knowing than anything they have ever encountered before.Eight hearts, each one beautiful and broken in its very own way, that beat together. Eight beacons of light in the murky darkness that is this world.They only have each other. Friends and foes alike are quick to remind them of that.Except not quite. Except there are people who love them, outside of their cluster, and loving a sensate can be… Bigger than any of them might have expected.





	1. The Fighter and the Thief

**Author's Note:**

> yeah so this is set at some point after the christmas special so felix is awake and sun is in prison that's pretty muc
> 
> (also petition for show!wolfie to do what fic!wolfie has already done and TELL felix about the other sensates already this is getting ridiculous)

Sometimes he likes to guess which one of them it is. Their very names are foreign to him as he probes them one by one, but somehow, each of them bring up a sensation.

When he thinks /Riley/ he thinks of the mountain springs of his childhood, and he can almost feel the freshness of the icy water against his lips.

/Will/ is different, Will is the emptiness and exhaustion that comes after a surge of adrenaline, when your heart slows down after it’s threatened to burst out of your chest.

/Capheus/ is the memory of the sun’s rays warming your skin, and /Nomi/ is the feeling that lingers after someone squeezes your hand, soft and reassuring.

Felix knew all of them, once, when his mind was shut off from the world and all its distractions. But now there are only these brief sensations, and he wonders, sometimes, if he’s imagining it. But then he feels her.

Sun, he thinks. This one is Sun. This one is bare feet against cool concrete, and palms buzzing after fingernails have dug into them. This one is anger and sorrow and loss and emptiness and loneliness, imprisoned emotions yearning to be let loose. With her comes a dizzying sensation, as if he is balancing on the edge of a precipice.

And that’s how he knows that she’s here. She comes more often than any of the others (except, of course, for the one who is the echo of chiming bells and the scent that remains after a stick of incense has burned out), but she never speaks.

She listens silently to the Felix’s anecdotes and his grand plans, and the things he says to coax a smile onto Wolfgang’s stubborn lips. She’s there as he talks of old memories, and laugh at the horrors of yesterday. She hears the stories he tells his friend, both the ones he swear are true and the few that actually are. He wonders if she understands that. And then, he wonders if she cares.

Because when she’s in the room Felix understands what it’s like to live like she does, cornered at the rim of any abyss that threatens to swallow her whole. Sun’s whole life has been about control, about never letting her guard down, even for a second. He doesn’t know why, exactly, but he knows that it’s true.

And listening to him doesn’t help her forget, but it helps her remember. There is a world out there, Felix’s stories remind her. A world where there is as much good as there is bad, a world where there is laughter and love and heartbreak and happiness and sorrow, and people are allowed to feel them. A world that is wild and reckless, a world where passion reigns over logic. A world where people can lower their defenses, at least for a little while, and just live.

So whenever he feels a prickling at the back of his neck and a restlessness spreading through his body, Felix makes sure to speak just a little bit louder. Because maybe he can’t give back the life that was stolen from Sun, but he can let her experience it, at least for a few short moments. And the stories grow ever wilder because now Felix isn’t just living for himself.

He’s living for her.


	2. The Hunted and the Convict

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> imma be real with you all i sort of forgot this existed which is why this is 4 months late but yeah enjoy
> 
> TW: allusions to domestic (and regular) abuse, both mental and physical

Soo-Jin has started pocketing small pieces of fabric and thread whenever she has sewing duty. Not for herself, but for the man that sometimes visits her cellmate. She can’t see him, of course, but she knows that he’s there. Sometimes because Sun tells her, and sometimes because she catches the scent of sweat and shaving cream that’s several days old. It seems to linger in the air, and in it she can sense his desperation and his fear. Soo-Jin knows both of those things all too well.

She has only managed to pry bits and pieces of his story from Sun, but even so her heart aches for the man. And when her cellmate finally tells her about his appearance, about his bloodshot eyes and unwashed hair that hasn’t been cut in too long, Soo-Jin lets the first scrap of cloth slide into the leg of her overall.

Because she knows him, even though they have never spoken and she cannot even begin to imagine the hell he’s been through. She knows him because she was him. Soo-Jin remembers lying curled up against a wall, cradling her aching arm and not bothering to wipe the tears rolling down her cheeks. She remembers living in a constant state of fear, never knowing what he would do next. She remembers knowing that every moment of peace could be her last, and that there was always, always, something coming. She remembers the emptiness that comes from having nowhere to hide, nowhere to run, and no way to fend off your demons.

She remembers never daring to sleep, never daring to let her guard down. She remembers being stretched thinner and thinner, to her breaking point and past it. She remembers longing for a haven, for someplace safe, even though she knew that it was impossible.

And she remembers one of her husband’s visitors bringing his wife over, an older woman with eyes that never left the ground. They never exchanged a word - how could they have, when he was there? - but when the woman passed Soo-Jin on her way out, their eyes met and the older woman pushed something into her hand. It was only hours later that Soo-Jin dared to unclench her fist and examine it.

In it lay her salvation, in the form of a needle and some thread.

So the next time the man named Will comes, Soo-Jin asks Sun if he will hear her if she speaks to him. Then, ignoring her friend’s stares, she sits down on the cold cell floor, opposite the spot where she believes him to be. She shows him the bobby pin that she has managed to bend into the correct shape, and how to pull the thread through it. She picks up two pieces of fabric, and shows him how to sew them together.

They sit like that for hours. Sometimes Sun, sitting on the bunk behind Soo-Jin, asks her a question or makes an observation. It is a strange way to speak to Will, but it’s worth it because she can hear the wonder in his words even when they’re said in Sun’s doubtful voice.

He comes the next day as well, and then again three days after that. His visits are anything but regular, but he keeps coming. Gradually, Sun’s scepticism turns into confusion. By her descriptions of the man Soo-Jin knows that Will no longer looks like a man cast adrift, and that while the fear still lingers in his eyes, there is hope there as well. Sun doesn’t understand why, but Soo-Jin does. She has passed on the gift that was once given to her. The gift of a few precious moments of peace, of a safe haven in this chaotic mess of a world.

And though she cannot picture his face, nor his surroundings, she knows, somehow, that his hands mirror her own. That there is a man, somewhere who is holding a needle in rough, calloused fingers, and ever so carefully guiding the tip of the thread through the eye. While he works, he breathes just a little bit easier. And that is enough.

She may not know what Will is facing, but she knows that by giving him this solace, she has eased his burden. It is all she can offer, but in the grand scheme of things, it is the tiny, everyday things that matter the most.

And as small a gift as a needle and some thread can change a person’s life forever.


	3. The Loyal and the Lawless

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> guess what's backkk?
> 
> sense8 (cry w me about the finale pls) and also this fic!
> 
> TW: transphobia, deadnaming, emotionally abusive parents

“This one,” Estella Rodriguez jabs a perfectly manicured fingernail against a pixelated photograph on her computer screen. “This is one of yours, no?”

But she doesn’t wait for her son to reply. The look that crosses his face when he scans the text, when he reads the headline and sees the name, is enough. Wheeling her office chair around, Estella meets Lito’s eyes.

“I want to speak to her.”

She doesn’t know why, or what, only that something, anything, must be said. That this will not stand.

“/Mama/-” Lito begins, but cuts himself off. “I’m here, /Señora/ Rodriguez.”

“Estella, please,” she waves a hand. “From what my son has told me, the two of you are rather closely… /Linked/.”

Lito - or no, not Lito, not anymore - chuckles softly. “That’s one way of putting it.”

“Then I suppose you’ve seen this article now, even if it had somehow escaped your notice before?”

Her son sighs, deeply, and there is a sorrow in his eyes that is not his. It is Nomi’s, and Estella’s heart goes out to her, to the stranger standing here in her son’s place.

“I’ve seen it many times,” Nomi says softly. “Say what you will about my mother, but she knows how to make her voice heard.”

Estella doesn’t answer, turning back to the headline printed in bold black letters across her screen - Delusions of a Juvenile Delinquent : The Corruption of Michael Marks.

“I suppose I should be grateful that she didn’t call me her son, at least,” Nomi speaks again, and even though she knows that it is not Lito speaking, Estella cannot help but wince at that.

She wonders how it can be that somebody would turn on their own child like this, condemning them simply for being themselves. How narrow-minded one can be to believe that it is best to cut them off completely, rather than make the barest of efforts to understand and accept them for who they are.

And she remembers how frightfully close she was to doing the same, all those years ago when she first guessed Lito’s secret. It is, and will always be, her greatest shame, and seeing Lito now, empty gaze fixed on the screen, she realizes that this is, in a way, the ghost of what could have been.

Except it isn’t.

Except Nomi Marks is a real person. She has experienced the pain that Lito was spared, and what sort of mother would Estella be if her heart did not break seeing this rejected daughter stare back at her through her son’s eyes?

So she makes up her mind. And speaks.

“That woman,” she almost spits out the word, “is not your mother. She lost the right to that title the moment she turned you away. No mother worth her name would ever give up on her child.”

“/Señora/ Rodriguez-”

“/Estella/. You are one with my son, and that means that you are my child too. So you listen to me, /mija/. Let go of those that do not deserve your time. You owe that despicable woman nothing. No child does. A mother’s love is a right, but a child’s love must be earned. Since she denied you the first, there is no use holding on to the latter.”

Nomi doesn’t answer, so Estella continues.

“Families can be bound to each other by blood or choice, it’s true, but what use is the former without the latter? What use is a person who renounces you over so small a detail, even if they were the person who birthed you? Nothing! /Nada/! So waste no more time on her, /mija/. Your life will be far richer without her in it. And-”

Estella pauses, unsure of how to phrase this next part. Then she sees the smile forming on Lito’s lips, and while it /is/ still Nomi she sees her son in it too. So when she speaks up again, she addresses them both.

“And perhaps you will be content with that. But if you ever need a mother, one who will love you and /choose you/ no matter what, then I will always be here.”


End file.
